In the 1950s, CIA's Soviet Russia (SR) Division project for clandestine radio broadcasting in Russian from Greece had CIA cryptonyms AECROAK and AEHANGOVER; the name of the radio station was Nasha Rossiya (Our Russia), which probably began shortwave broadcasting in 1954 – the exact date is not known. The 1955 book Broadcasting Stations of the World listed Nasha Rossiya as a clandestine station using the Russian language; the 1953 edition did not list it.
The programs at first were tape recordings prepared by a CIA "panel" in the United States, air pouched to CIA station in Athens, Greece, and then sent directly to the PYREX transmitting site for broadcasting. The procedure was then changed in 1957, with the tapes sent to a local contact, who processed the tapes and then sent them to PYREX for airing.
In September 1957, shortwave broadcasts from PYREX to the USSR aired from 07:00 to 07:30 AM and Berlin from 9:30 to 10:00 PM. The total number of broadcast hours for the month was 784, with a total number of tape runs 1, 918. Soviet jamming of the Nasha Rossiya broadcasts that had begun in 1954 was so reduced that in some cases, jamming started between 5 and 20 minutes after the broadcasts began or went off the air before the broadcasts ended. Many broadcasts were jammed by only one transmitter that meant the programs were audible in the target areas. The total jamming free broadcast time was 57 hours, 34 minutes.
On September 12, 1957, Nasha Rossiya began broadcasting "latest news and comments" programs locally prepared in Athens. The tapes were then sent to the CIA transmitting site for broadcasting Monday through Thursday. Locally prepared tapes were then sent on Friday for weekend broadcasts, as there were no delivery of tapes on Saturdays and Sundays.
In February 1958, the broadcast scripts prepared in Athens included:
· U.S Sputnik “Alpha 58.”
(5 ½ minutes)
· Appeal to Soviet troops stationed in Romania in connection with peasants’ uprisings.
(4 ½ minutes)
· Opposition to Ulbricht in East Germany’s Communist Party. (3 ½ minutes)
· Khrushchev’s speech in Minsk.
(10 ½ minutes)
· Khrushchev’s grandiose plans covering the next 15 years. (3 minutes)
· Soviet Army Day. (8 minutes) 10
By February 1958, Nasha Rossiya broadcast an average of 760 times per month because "Headquarters post-Hungarian Revolution policy call for greater emphasis on Russian language propaganda directed to Great-Russian elements in the USSR."
According to a KGB May 1959 report, for April, "Programs of the radio station 'Nasha Rossiya'(Our Russia) were listened to primarily at night time from 22:35 - 04:45 ... in the suburbs of Kiev, Tbilisi and such cities as Kamensk-Uralsk, Serpukhov, Minsk, Borisov, Smolensk, Mozhaysk, Klin and others.”
It is presumed that all broadcasts of Nasha Rossiya ceased in October 1959, or shortly after that, because Broadcast Stations of the World listed Nasha Rossiya as a clandestine station in Russian in the 1959 edition, but not in the 1960 edition.
More details on Nasha Rossiya can be found here:
No comments:
Post a Comment